Vanilla 2.1b1 Released

I'm pleased to announce that we are beginning our release cycle of Vanilla 2.1, starting with beta 1. Since this is not the final release you will have to download it from it's direct link here.

Please help with Vanilla's 2.1 release.

This beta release is here so that the community can help us get Vanilla ready to release 2.1. Please keep this in mind when downloading it. Please do not download this release if you do not have some experience using Vanilla. You may have the best intentions, but you will be hindering, not helping the testing process.

Report issues on Github, not here.

We really want you to report issues on our github issues page. If you don't have a github account please get one. It's an excellent tool and you will benefit from being a part of it. If you really don't want to get a github account then just cross your fingers that someone else finds your issue.

A couple of points.

Turning debug on will really help with testing. To do this add the following to your config.php file:

$Configuration['Debug'] = TRUE;

Vanilla 2.1 has new feature that will combine your css files into one file and minify them. This is potentially a great feature that will give a real speed boost to a lot of communities. This feature is somewhat experimental though so we've made it an opt-in feature. To turn on this feature add the following to your config.php file:

$Configuration['Garden']['CombineAssets'] = TRUE;

Vanilla 2.1 on Github

I've created a branch on github called 2.1. This branch will contain all future 2.1* versions from now until the far future. If you want to keep up with 2.1 or submit a fix for 2.1 in particular then this is the branch you want to be working on. Keeping a branch separate like this means that we can just fix bugs and not introduce new bugs.

Why did this release take so long?

Vanilla has been growing like crazy and we've had the opportunity to host some amazing, massive communities. This can only benefit the open source version of Vanilla. It's also made us overwhelmingly busy at times. This release represents a longer time-frame than we'd like to have between releases. Most likely the next release will be sooner, but have less changed than Vanilla 2.1.

How long will this beta process take?

How long Vanilla 2.1 takes to have it's final release depends on how much help we get with its issues. If we get a lot of people testing then we can have more confidence that Vanilla 2.1 works on all those strange web hosts out there.

@Todd said:
We really want you to report issues on our github issues page. If you don't have a github account please get one. It's an excellent tool and you will benefit from being a part of it. If you really don't want to get a github account then just cross your fingers that someone else finds your issue.

Ok, guys, a request from one of the helpers on this forum: Please when you have a Vanilla 2.1 issue and want to post a new discussion, first search for your issue on the forum, then post your issue, mentioning that you've searched.I've also dedicated a special Vanilla Wiki page related to the issues you might encounter while upgrading to 2.1 beta.http://vanillawiki.homebrewforums.net/index.php/Vanilla_2_1

@peregrine said:
What do you think of putting the latest version of jQuery in 2.1b1 since we are testing anyway. There are more features in the later versions.

Good catch and we should do this. I can tell you that the only reason why we are slow to update jquery is that damn nested sortable plugin. It breaks with every jquery update, but we rely on it for the category management page.

That being said, a jQuery update will obviously have to wait for 2.1b2 since 2.1b1 is already out.

Great! Trying to upgrade from a previous Github version.
Is there a different way of upgrading 2.x to 2.1? These instructions don't quite work as the /utility folder does not exist nor does the /index.php?p=/utility/update page:

@Kswift said:
Great! Trying to upgrade from a previous Github version.
Is there a different way of upgrading 2.x to 2.1? These instructions don't quite work as the /utility folder does not exist nor does the /index.php?p=/utility/update page: